


Sephiroth - Child in Solitary Confinement

by goddamnitaisha



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 14:46:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18573649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddamnitaisha/pseuds/goddamnitaisha
Summary: A day in the life and labs of Sephiroth, aged five-and-a-half, as he wants attention from Professor Hojo. Bitter drabble ending where Sephiroth asks after his mother. Drabble was also called 'Attention'.





	Sephiroth - Child in Solitary Confinement

**Author's Note:**

> This one is for crimson-sun.
> 
> Think about the concept of ‘prisoners.’ Prisoners have no outside-world life. They are at the mercy of their keepers. Meals will come - there're merit to keeping them alive. When the prisoner is not of use, there is always the firing squat. Their stay will end someday, but it won't end today. They are here, today. And 'today' often lasts too long. 
> 
> What is the worst punishment for a misbehaving prisoner? What punishment do they bestow upon the worst of the worst?
> 
> Solitary confinement.

 

"Try Doctor Hojo."

"Go away. I have no time to play house with you," the Doctor said.

Sephiroth didn't know how to play house, but he did know how to play dead. Then you lay on the floor and didn't move and didn't breathe. Playing house seemed boring. Houses just stood at the side of the road. Would you need to put your hands up to make a roof? Maybe. 

 _Silly Doctor,_ Sephiroth thought. _What fun would it be to play house?_

"Let go of my sleeve, Sephiroth," the Doctor said sternly. "I have more important things to do today."

"What things?"

"Not that anything would make sense to you - you're a child. Go read up on your biology and books and we'll talk in a few years."

_Years!_

"But-!" he started. A few hours were too long. After hours came days and then months and  _then_ years. He was five-and-a-half. He didn't want to stay away from Doctor Hojo for _years_. How _many_ years? 

He tugged the white sleeve again. "But I want to talk to you now!"

"I don't have time for you." The doctor put his clipboard between his teeth.

Sephiroth was picked up with two of Hojo's massive hands under his armpits. He was scooped up onto Hojo's arm. It wasn't a normal scoop. The doctor was annoyed, that much could Sephiroth tell. 

From his spot at the arm, super high up, he could oversee the entire world. Well, not the entire world but at least the entire laboratory room. He reached out and touched the doctor's clipboard. He tugged it. 

The doctor moved his head to the left side: the clipboard slid out of Sephiroth's grasp. Then the doctor started walking. "Homf," he said with the clipboard between his teeth, meaning ‘ _don’t.’_

Sephiroth tried to pull it again. 

"Honfff!" the doctor said again, and Sephiroth giggled. 

Hojo put his shoulder against the door and pushed it open. 

They walked through the hallways, and Sephiroth was enjoying the ride. The doctor didn't pick him up as much as he had before. And the entire world bobbed up and down with every step. it was funny. He reached out and took the metal pipe of the doctor’s glasses. 

"Sefferroff, shoff," the doctor warned. 

Sephiroth giggled at how his own name sounded. He tugged the glasses hard, and with some effort they slipped off the doctor's face. He held them up. The world was all funny and blurry. He put the black frame on his own nose and ears. The world was blurry. He cross-eyed.

"Spending quality time with your son, I see?" the Professor Gast said. 

"Shuff uff," Hojo muttered.

"Oh, I even understood that. Don't let the boy hear you utter that."

"Shuff uff," parrotted Sephiroth. "Shuff uff."

"Shufsh," Hojo said.

"Oh dear," the Professor said, but he was smiling, so Sephiroth thought he was having fun too and making the Professor laugh. 

"Shuff uff," Sephiroth grinned. His eyes were adjusting to the blur of wearing glasses.

"Here, let me take that from you," the Professor said. 

"Fhang yoo," the doctor said and lift the clipboard, but the professor took the glasses from Sephiroth's face. He held them up. 

Sephiroth's eyes instantly changed back to understand the normal world.

Doctor Hojo gave Professor Gast a you-ve-been-naughty look. He was all frowny and the corners of his mind tugged down.

Sephiroth ducked his ears between his shoulders and was quiet.

The Professor took the legs of the Professor's glasses and wiggled them forth and back. "Huh, this one is a little bit unstable. Stand still, I'll put them on. Thereee you go. Is everything clear again?"

The Doctor said nothing. 

The Professor said: "Right, let me get that clipboard." 

"I see two big problems and one's right in front of me. The other's on my arm."

"You drooled all over the status report of the bone marrow examination of JENOVA's right hand."

"Take him to his room." Hojo said and held out Sephiroth.

"Those are nice teeth marks." Gast ran his finger over the half-circle of dents that were now in the paper.

"He's a bug to have in the labs."

"I was thinking-"

"I'm done with him."

"- we should do a dental examination as well."

Sephiroth hung in Hojo's outstretched hands.

"What? Teeth bone marrow?"

"Teeth bone marrow last. Making a print, checking for causes of cavities, food the cetra ate, contrast to human teeth - we've not spent much time on her teeth yet. Nor her face."

"Let's wait until the machine spits out the results first," Hojo said. "Let's work systematically."

"Yes, yes,... systematically..." the Professor said. He flipped to the second page of the scribbles, and rubbed a hand over his brown moustache.    
Sephiroth imitated the gesture and rubbed over his upper lip. 

"Take him to his room," Hojo said. 

"Hm-hmm..." the Professor replied. His eyes remained fixed on the papers. Then he slowly...ever so slowly, turned left. 

\- "Professor."

Gast dippped his head.

\- "Professor?"

Gast sleepwalked into the direction where Sephiroth and Hojo had come from, and he was staring at the scribbles on the clipboard pages. He flicked to the third. 

Hojo sighed. 

He took Sephiroth back onto his arm, and breezed through the dark hallways up to the boy’s room. Not his upstairs bedroom with the green walls and the toys. They went to the specimen hall, to Sephiroth’s _other_  room. 

Sephiroth waved at the creatures in the stone cubes that had one glass wall. None waved back, not even the big furry creature. He seem to be asleep. It was a shame, because he was nice to talk to. He was funny. He said strange new things about the world outside. “Doctor, please wait, please.”

Doctor Hojo stopped walking. 

Sephiroth reached out. He stretched and stretched until he could put three fingertips on the glass. 

The red dog opened his eyes. He jolted awake, and looked at the general direction of Sephiroth and Hojo. Then it swished with its tail. It dragged over the floor.

"May I play with Seto III?"

"No you may not." Hojo started walking again.

"Why do I may not?"

"He can't talk any more. He lost his tongue."

"I can help. I'll search for it."

"It won't be coming back."

"But I'll help looking! Maybe it's under the cabinet upstairs, just like where I finded your car keys!"

"Don't raise your voice when you're next to my ear." The Professor opened the door of a rather large box that was Sephiroth’s specimen room. Originally the specimen room had been meant for Dualhorn babies, but there hadn't been a baby D-horn in a while, and a while back Professor Gast had assigned it to the boy for when they were busy. 

The floor and walls were white. Books were scattered over the floor. There was a chair. A mattress with a blanket: in case they worked late, or forgot him. Sometimes they forgot. Then Sephiroth had to sleep down here. 

The Professor put him down. He put a hand on Sephiroth's back and pushed him to the door. "Stay in here for now."

Inside, Sephiroth turned around. "But I want to stay with you."

\- "Not today. Doctor's busy."

Sephiroth pouted.

Hojo shut the door. He paced away.

Sephiroth was alone. He looked around the room. "I want to play house," he said to himself. 

He aligned the books as if they were a street, and then walked over them. He jumped, and pretended to be a house. He put his hands over his head with his fingertips touching and his elbows out. He pretended that tiny doctors and professors walked over the street and said, look this is a nice house, we should live here. 

And they would walk through the front door that was the space between his legs, and then climb onto his knees, and grab his clothes.  
He stood there for a long time. 

Eventually he decided that it wasn't as much fun as playing dead. When he played dead, at least the scientists came running. 

He sat down and started reading. But he already had worked his way through Mr. Grey's big Anatomy book, and there was no part of the human body that had any interesting bits. He knew everything, from tailbone to funny bone. 

He sat and read until his legs hurt, and he wanted to run. But running indoors wasn't allowed. Then he started walking. He walked four, twelve, 85 round through his quarters. He counted his paces until he lost count. Sometimes it was twenty steps for a round, sometimes it was nineteen. Sometimes it was twenty.

And that's the environment he grew up in.

Days of silence, and silence. The cell Sephiroth was in, was soundproof, and made of three walls and one mirror. From the outside, the mirror was normal glass, but from the inside, Sephiroth only saw his own reflection.

Green eyes, white hair. He learnt what he looked like by staring at himself. He learnt to hate his image, learnt to love it. The exact features didn't matter, but his green eyes and white hair were the reason why he was in here, thus the reason why he stood out. The days passed and the nights passed, and Sephiroth grew up. They changed his books. At rare times, he was taken out for a test in the pit.

One day Doctor Hojo came in. “Congratulations, you’re six now.”

Sephiroth looked up from a chemistry book that didn't belong in the hands of a boy his age. "Doctor?"

"Sephiroth, what is a Diels-Alter reaction?" The Doctor sometimes asked random questions, to test him. 

"It is an organic chemical reaction between a conjugated diene and a substituted alkene, commonly termed the dienophile, to form a substituted cyclohexene system.”

"What do we at Shin-Ra use it most for?"

"In synthetic organic chemistry."

"I didn't ask what _where_ we use it, but _what for_ ," the doctor said, stressing the last word. The man lingered at the door, and Sephiroth knew that if he said this wrong, the doctor may leave again, to get a different book. But then he might forget Sephiroth... and then who knows what time doctor Hojo would get back! 

The boy hastened to say: "As-! As a reliable method for forming 6-membered systems with good control over regio- and stereochemical properties!"

"What's most unique about the Diels-Alter?"

"You can reverse it. Under certain conditions!"

“What’s that called?”

“Retro-Diels-Alter?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes?”

"Excellent answers," the doctor said. He gave Sephiroth a faint smile, and walked into Sephiroth's room. He put his hand under the child's chin, and curled his fingers repeatedly, like he would tickle a dog or cat under the chin. 

It gave Sephiroth a warm feeling. He looked up and tried to lean into the hand.

Just as he did that, the doctor put it back in the pocket of his white laboratory coat. "Well done. Keep studying. Do you have any other questions?"

"I do have a question."

"Let's hear it then."

"Who's my mommy?

There was a space behind the shell of Sephiroth’s ear and the start of his hairline that the Doctor scratched his fingernails over. 

Sephiroth wondered if a Retro-Sephiroth-Alter reaction was possible. Would that bring her back?


End file.
